County councillors’ astonishing lack of interest in FOI process

By Kate Harries AWARE News Network August 30 2012

Midland Deputy Mayor Stephan Kramp pointed to a curious divergence within the county’s policy on accountability and transparency at this week’s county council meeting.

But nothing happened and the problem remains.

Here’s the issue: The policy states that “all county councillors and county staff shall be responsible for ensuring that the principles of this policy are upheld.”

But, Kramp pointed out, one of the key ways citizens access information is through Freedom of Information requests, and these requests are not reported to councillors. 

Kramp noted that his experience in Midland is that residents often go through an FOI process unnecessarily, and a councillor can be helpful in redirecting a request so that the information is provided more easily. 

He said that in order to provide assistance, he needs to know what’s going on. “How are members of (county council) committee informed as to what FOI requests have been received?” Kramp asked. 

County Clerk Brenda Clark explained that Warden Cal Patterson has been delegated to render all decisions as to access or partial access. “As a matter of principle,” members of council would not be notified, she said. 

Kramp said that he recently learned “by happenstance” about an individual’s attempts to access information relating to waste management, and he was surprised at the difficulties encountered. 

Generally, the county’s response seems to be “deny, deny, deny,” he said, asking whether denial is based on the identity of the individual making the request.

“Rather an interesting question,” replied CAO Mark Aitken, stating that staff follows policy. “There are no biases in regard to who makes applications.”

“That’s the answer I hoped to hear,” said Kramp. However, he pointed out, how can he fulfil his responsibility to ensure that the principles of accountability and transparency are upheld if he doesn’t know about problems members of the public may experience in obtaining information.

Tiny Mayor Ray Millar noted that the philosophy applied in his municipality is that such requests are decided by council as a whole and are dealt with as confidential items. 

Kramp said he would be more comfortable with the process developed in Tiny instead of the practice of having the warden alone making the decision without any oversight. 

At that, Patterson called for a vote on the motion to accept the policy – first adopted in 2007 and recently updated. 

Kramp’s was the only dissenting vote. 

This is astonishing. 

AWARE Simcoe pushed accountability and transparency as a key issue in the last election because of the incredible difficulties citizens experienced during the long Dump Site 41 battle. (Incidentally, an educated guess is that the person whose FOI requests are being stonewalled is Steve Ogden, longtime DS41 opponent and FOI specialist.)

Every candidate in the last election professed commitment to these principles. And yet we see that county councillors prefer to abdicate their express responsibility for ensuring open government, choosing instead to vest all authority in one individual, with no reporting to county council. 

This laissez-faire stance is not what we were promised.